http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2001/05/16/no_such_agency.html
By RON KAMPEAS
Associated Press Writer
May 16, 2001
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) Once, the National Security Agency insignia, a
bald eagle perched on a skeleton key, surveyed a barren terrain of
top-secret letterhead, its forbidding stare known only to a privileged
few.
Now, it spreads its wings over teddy bears, tie-dye shirts and
nail-trimmers sold to tourists, part of an effort to let Americans get
a glimpse of what the nation's premier eavesdropping agency does.
Competing with a dozen other agencies for intelligence dollars, the
largest and most secretive of them wants to spread the word about
itself _ without revealing too much.
Most of its work _ absorbing intelligence gathered from spy-plane
flights like those near China, for example _ is still plenty
hush-hush.
But its openness around the edges is a departure for the 49-year-old
organization jokingly called "No Such Agency" and perhaps best known
for efforts not to be known at all.
"It's changed all right," said author James Bamford. Twenty years ago
he faced threats of prosecution for publishing NSA-related documents;
recently he faced a crowd of agents at his book launch on the NSA
campus.
"Instead of putting me in jail," he said, "they're throwing me a book
party."
The NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, accelerated the change
after his 1999 appointment, perhaps most dramatically by making public
two lacerating reports on agency deficiencies.
"There are some things that we can say, that we ought to say," he
commented in an unusual interview with the History Channel.
The end of the Cold War led some to question the need for a national
eavesdropper and subjected intelligence budgets generally to a harder
look.
"Like everyone else in the intelligence community, the NSA is being
forced to reveal more than it wants to about itself," said Norman
Polmar, who wrote "Spy Plane: The U2 History," an NSA-related exploit
gone wrong.
The internal NSA reports released by Hayden said that "ineffective
leadership" and "our insular, somewhat arrogant culture and position"
had led Congress to cut money to the agency, which gets the largest
share of the $30 billion intelligence budget.
Openness only goes so far. A European Union team angrily left the
United States last week when NSA and CIA officials refused to meet
with its members. The team is investigating whether the United States
engages in economic espionage.
NSA agents were once what snoops called "top secret famous" _ nameless
shadows celebrated only among the select few in the intelligence
community.
Their coups were legion: Agency eavesdropping allowed President
Kennedy to learn Soviet bluff lines during the Cuban missile crisis,
and the NSA's Berber linguists linked Libyan agents to the 1986
bombing of a German discotheque that killed a U.S. soldier.
But in recent years, the progenitor of information technology in the
1950s has been lagging behind Silicon Valley.
In January 2000, the NSA's overtasked computers shut down for three
days.
Hayden slashed staff _ the agency now has 38,000 _ and hired outside
contractors. Last year, Congress increased intelligence funding by 7
percent.
To be sure, sleight-of-hand tics persist at the NSA. Gift shop
purchases appear on credit card statements credited to a mysterious
Civilian Welfare Fund.
The NSA museum, vaunted as the hallmark of its new openness,
concentrates on World War II codebreaking.
"It's an outstanding tool in helping people understand what the NSA is
about without getting into some of the problematic issues," said
agency historian Patrick Weadon.
"It's too much about war," complained Sandro Dallaturca, a Belgian
banking encryptologist who had been looking forward to learning about
encoding techniques.
Missy Spiegl, 15, whose father works for the NSA, thought the museum
might give her some family insights.
"I've been trying for years to get out of my dad what he does, but I
can't," she said.
Inside the agency, change has been palpable.
The NSA has farmed out some research, allowed an ex-agent to publish
an account of how he redesigned an internal communications system and
cooperated on Bamford's book, a largely sympathetic history of the
agency by an author who favors more spending on intelligence
technology.
That may have been an astute move on the NSA director's part, Polmar
said. "Honey catches more than a fly swatter."
Spreading suburbs have brought neighbors close to the agency's
long-isolated campus. After a few mishaps _ including a SWAT-team
swoop on a real estate photographer _ the NSA reached out to the
community.
"They are the hidden powerhouse of the county," said Janet Owens, Anne
Arundel County leader. She's thrilled the NSA recently enticed General
Dynamics to build a local plant.
Staffers once forbidden to say where they worked now lead one of the
nation's largest blood drives. NSA firemen train local volunteers in
how to contain a chemical attack.
There's the after-school tutoring: Linguists monitor drug traffickers
by day and teach Spanish by night; code-cracking mathematicians walk
teens through logarithms.
And there's a 4-year-old park commemorating the 152 people who have
died in service to the agency and country.
"I am military intelligence and I am always out front ... always,"
reads the plaque.
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